Domesticated Dead
by Skarto
Summary: (RE:Damnation/games fic) When Leon gets a distress call from the Eastern Slav Republic, he isn't expecting to meet an old friend - especially not one who prefers meat and blood to regular food. Plaga!Buddy, Leon/Buddy (main pairing), Leon/Ada
1. Start Again

Domesticated Dead

Chapter 1: Back to the Start

_-:-_

_February 17__th__, 2014_

_Holigrad, Eastern Slav Republic_

_-:-_

_I left something for you in the church._

White plastic hung from the rafters like sheets of ice. Three years' worth of dust had settled on the scaffolds and the debris inside. A thick layer coated the alter. He drew a line through it, then brushed it off his glove when it clung. No cross. Probably looted. Yes, he could believe that.

Below the shattered roof, snow had gathered and smoothed over the remains. Above, the midnight sky watched him, indifferent.

Leon gripped the handgun a little harder. His breath plumed out and formed puffy wisps of clouds in the air. A breeze gusted through the church, made the sheets flutter. Shadows, born from his flashlight, played behind them, each one a reaching hand, or a head. He ignored them. Looked for signs. Calling might have brought someone (or some_thing_) out, but he wasn't a rookie. Making those kinds of mistakes was a thing of the past.

_I left something for you in the church._

He didn't need the absent signature to know who the note was from. The perfume that hugged the surface of the paper told him everything, and unwritten words informed him of trouble. _Look out, look out, Ada's about._ But so far, she hadn't shown herself. So far, nothing. Nothing out of place, nothing disturbed. Nothing had been in the church for a long time.

His eyes found the small ladder to the wings, spied another that went up into darkness. Nothing had been on the ground floor, at least. A rat dashed through the stream of light, its squeaks tiny and furious. It vanished into a pile of rotten wood. Not too cold for vermin.

He climbed the first ladder, thankful for his gloves and leather coat. Freezing his skin to metal would be a sure-fire way to look and feel like a complete ass, even if the only ones around to see it were the rats. The walls collected the sounds of his feet on each rung, threw them back at him.

Cryptic distress calls from out of the blue didn't happen too often. Especially not ones that were nothing more than a garble of static punched with words. _B.O.W. Eastern Slav Republic. Send help. I repeat, we are outnumbered. _The speaker didn't sound Russian, or even distressed. The DSO puzzled over it for an irritatingly short amount of time before kicking him out the door to investigate. After all, he 'knew the terrain'. Someone needed to tell the bastards that the _terrain_ had a bad habit of changing after three years. And also that a few days running around after various plaga, B.O.W, and cranky resistance fighters didn't really qualify as being experienced in the local geography.

But he'd agreed to go anyway. A part of him itched to see Buddy again, see if he was still around. And, Leon had finally admitted to himself on the flight over, to see if he was still alive. To reassure himself that all those past fuck-ups hadn't overwhelmed Buddy and left him swinging from a rafter somewhere. Or on a bed with empty bottles. Or at the bottom of the river, trapped in his wheelchair –

His foot slipped on one of the rungs and his heart lurched. _Stop it. Just because you didn't see him on the street when you walked to the hotel doesn't mean he's six foot in the ground._ _Stop assuming, Kennedy, and concentrate on the mission._

Hardly much of a thrilling mission so far. The scented note had been slipped under his door while he slept, and he had zero leads on the distress call. He reached the top of the ladder and looked around. Still nothing. His hands clasped the sides of the next ladder and he looked up into the gloom. A light at the very top. Encouraging, although odds were some poor homeless guy had made his way up there to stay out of the cold.

One hand found a rung. He hesitated, tilted his head up again. The air carried the faintest hint of decay. And mingled within, like a rose strangled with rotting flesh, perfume.

_I left something for you in the church._

Unease rose in his throat. Adrenaline ignited every cell. He didn't have to climb the ladder. He could turn around, walk away.

_You never walk away though, Kennedy. You can't._

He took a deep, silent breath, and started upwards towards the light. Halfway, he paused and strained his ears. A low whistle shivered through the tainted air. Just the wind. He kept going, felt his pulse hammer in his neck. Get ready, it seemed to say, get ready, get ready.

A quick peek over the top. Some kind of attic space, lit by a small electric lamp on a table. The vague shapes of furniture hulked in piles, covered by cloth and more dust. A pipe organ loomed out of the shadows, the keys gleaming like teeth. Darkness in the corners and ceiling thwarted the weak glow from the lamp. He shone his flashlight around, saw nothing but walls and more furniture, and hauled himself up into the room. The dust scattered itself into flurries at his feet.

Every muscle tensed. Hair prickled the back of his neck and arms when he edged towards the lamp. The rose won its struggle with the decay and caressed him in a cloud. A sliver case rested next to the lamp, and next to that –

Oh, disgusting.

Half a rat, frozen and stiff. Its tiny eyes stared up at him. No hindquarters, just a clean slice through. Explained the smell. Leon tore his own eyes away. Apprehension coiled in his stomach. He unlatched the case, prayed it didn't contain more dead rats, or something equally as nasty.

Inside, red silk spilled around syringes. Three empty, two full of – he held one against the light – a royal purple liquid. Shit. Looked like he'd been dropped headfirst into another fucking biohazard situation, but the colour was… odd. Familiar. Purple. What had been purple?

It fell back into place. Memories he wished he could forget. Spain. The castle. Luis Sera's face when the tentacle ripped through his chest. Saddler's smile, his purple robes, his hand holding the vial that contained the same coloured liquid. Purple –

"Purple is for Plaga."

His whisper blew white over the syringes. Something was here. He tightened his grip on the gun. Spun around.

The flashlight jittered over the furniture, the organ. Nothing. Well, wasn't he a jumpy little –

Behind him, on the table, a soft wisp of noise.

He spun again, gun up, light showing… another rat. He sighed out the tense breath captured by his lungs. The rat ambled towards him, stood on its back legs and sniffed in his direction, whiskers quivering. Brave little rodent. He kept his light on it as it scrambled around the case, its nose still sniff-sniff-sniffing everywhere. When it came upon its dead fellow, it stopped and, in halted degrees, nuzzled over the rigid fur. It turned its head in his direction and blinked up into the light, as though this strange bright creature had something to do with its companion's death.

Leon shrugged one shoulder at it. "Sorry for your loss."

He let his gun drop to his side. Maybe there wasn't anything here at all. Maybe Ada had meant for him to wait for her in this dingy, creepy little room. Maybe she'd explain what the damn syringes were for, although he wasn't holding out too much hope for that. Predicting Ada was going to be mysterious and enigmatic about something was like predicting the sun would rise the next day. After everything that happened in China, he felt like he'd earned a few answers.

Something on the floor caught his eye. He kneeled down and brushed his fingers over the red spots of blood on the floor. Still sticky, hadn't even had time to freeze. Too recent for comfort. The blood sloughed into flakes when he rubbed it between his fingers, and his lips pressed together.

A sharp squeal raised his gun again. He turned in time to see a dark shape flit from the table up into the void of the ceiling. No rat. Beams creaked above. He cast his flashlight around, caught wood, stone and a swaying chandelier. Another creak to the right. He pivoted, illuminated a hand before it snatched away into the shadows.

"I didn't come here to play hide and seek," he told the room. "Come on out, whoever you are. Show yourself."

The soft thud from behind startled him. The narrow beam of light found more blood, crawled up to show a whiskered face, nose no longer sniffing. With its mouth opening and closing, the rat shivered there on the floor. A gash tore it open from throat to stomach. Jesus, poor thing.

"Are you here to shoot me?"

The words came from the far side of the room. He recognised that voice, and wished he didn't. He kept his gun level. "I don't know, Buddy," he said, and crept forward as though the floor was made of thin glass, "that depends. Planning on hurting me?"

A sigh was his answer, on the other side of the room this time. Silence broke with another mournful whistle from the wind outside. He tried again. "I take it that rat popsicle's yours. Didn't know they were the national dish around here. Last time I had pierogi, and I'd prefer that to a ball of fur. Why don't you stay still, say hi to your favourite American properly?"

The silence returned, thicker than the blood on the floor. Then, careful and considered: "Turn off your light."

"Just want to make sure you're not gonna treat me like one of your furry friends."

"I won't hurt you."

So reassuring. Leon backed against one of the walls. Now that he didn't have to worry about any attacks from behind, he pressed the little button on his flashlight. The gun stayed up. Bad place for a fight. Too many places for an enemy to hide and definitely not enough light to see by. Nevertheless, he kept the flashlight off. After a few seconds of nothing, he scanned the shadows.

"All right, so where –"

A shape flashed in front of him. Instinct grabbed his fingers and he squeezed so hard the gun nearly went off. The shape didn't move, stood a few feet away. His heart thumped in his chest, and strangled his voice. "For fuck's sake, Buddy! I almost _did_ shoot you! What the hell?"

"I'm sorry." Buddy-shape took a step back. "I… it's nice to see you again." The words sounded fake, like they had been rehearsed and then fumbled when show time rolled around. Leon slowed his breathing, but his muscles stayed tense.

"Wish I could say the same, but you're looking too much like the enemy right now. What is all this, what's going on?"

"She didn't tell you."

"Ada?"

"I don't know her name." The lamp only showed outlines; hair, an ear, cheekbones, brow and the sharpness of lips. Eyes looked too much like black cavities. Outlines tilted back a little, and he made out a nose, nostrils flared. Sniffing, like the rat. "You've… changed."

"Think you're going to win that competition. What the hell happened to you? Where's Ada?"

Buddy swayed in front of him. When he spoke, his voice trembled with something that sounded like anger, or frustration. "Coming. Soon. Maybe. She… knew you'd come here. I didn't want you to. It was unfair."

"So, you're playing the mad man in the attic. Great." He holstered his gun. "Want to explain why you're throwing half-eaten rats at me and jumping around like Spiderman? In fact, how about we start with how you're jumping at all."

"Why did you leave?"

Instead of cringing away, he clenched his jaw. "Hey, no. Not playing that game. I asked you first."

"I woke up and you weren't there." The words came slow, ponderous. He'd rather they were accusing or pissed off. "I thought you'd stay, at least for a little while."

The reply faded in his throat. Guilt that had been simmering away for three years boiled over. "You… were fine," he said eventually, "I came to see you in the hospital. After the operation, do you remember? You were pretty high, kept talking about how much you liked the picture of the sunflowers on the wall, only you thought they were trees. Always pressed that button to bring the nurse over and ask her why they were yellow. I told you I was leaving."

He remembered the morphine bag. The sad way Buddy poked at his dead legs and smiled that slightly-horrifying, uncomprehending smile of a doped-up person _. Gotta leave now, Buddy,_ Leon had said after a while, _I gotta get home_. The lucidity cracked through, and Buddy had gripped his sleeve with the naked desperation of a child. _Don't go._

"It's not like I enjoyed leaving you in that place. I felt bad, and I still do, even though I shouldn't. But that still doesn't explain why you're… like this."

Footsteps creaked towards him. His hand went back down to his gun. Why had he put it away? Buddy leaned in close, too close. His height would have intimidated any lesser man, but Leon held his ground. A copper smell tinged the air; the remains of Buddy's rat snack.

"You left," came the sigh in his ear. His hand wouldn't move. Or his feet. "You _left_," Buddy said again, from behind clenched teeth, his lips brushing Leon's ear, "and I _died_."

Leon closed his eyes. Shivered.

"Glad to see you boys are getting along," said someone behind Buddy, "but you shouldn't play so rough, Alex."

The lips retreated. Buddy stepped away, and Leon staggered to the side. Roses clung to his arm and steadied him. "Ada," he managed to rasp out, "what the _fuck_ is going on?"

"I'm sorry, Leon. I'll explain everything in a moment, I promise." She let him go, and near the table came the sound of rustling. "Alex? I'm going to turn the light on now."

More footsteps, and then an overhead bulb flickered before bathing the room in a dirty light. Strange how it made the place look smaller. Ada watched him from across the room, her red coat trimmed with black fur. He didn't return her smile. Buddy stood next to the table, hands shielding his face.

"It takes a few minutes for him to adjust to the light levels," said Ada, "a throwback to the first generation of plaga. UV is out of the question. That knocks his price down a bit on the black market, unfortunately."

"Stop," rumbled Buddy behind his fingers, "threatening to sell me."

"Then behave."

Anger rose, hot and tight in Leon's chest. It tasted way too much like betrayal, like he'd walked in on his lover and his best friend fucking each other. "Look," he said, "I want those answers, and I want them now. I don't know what's going on, but I don't like it. Why are you calling him Alex?" Buddy peeked over his hands and exchanged a glance with Ada. That just pissed him off even more. "Tell me!"

Ada moved to his side. Her hand found his shoulder and only the anger kept him from touching her face in reply. "Leon… a couple of weeks ago, Alexander Kozachenko – Alex – died."

"That's your real name?"

"Don't tell him that." Buddy glared through his fingers at them. "He has no right to know."

"Since you both dragged my ass all the way out here, I think I have every right to know. How did you die? Did you inject yourself with another plaga?"

Buddy's jaw clenched. He took his hands away from his face, and squinted in the light. A rough layer of stubble covered his chin and the shadows under his eyes seemed too dark to be human. Was he paler than before, or was that Leon's imagination? When he spoke, Buddy's gaze found the floor. "It came back. That's all you need to know."

"That's not good enough." He stepped forward. Buddy looked up at him, then to the side, moving back as Leon came forwards. "Do you hurt people? Eat them like you ate that rat? Well?"

"I would never eat –"

"You must be joking." Ada came between them, close enough for him to see the sincerity in her eyes. "I gave him a dog once and he wouldn't touch it. Too human for his own good. He's fine as long as it's kept in check."

"With whatever's in those syringes, right?" She nodded. He laughed, and it sounded more furious than sceptical. "So that's why I'm here. I can't believe it. I thought that after China you'd care enough about me to at least spare me this."

"It's because I owe you that I brought you here, Leon." Her lips pressed together, and he ached for the tension between them to disappear. Over her shoulder, Buddy paced three steps to his left, then his right, crossing from the light to the gloom that still collected under the rafters. "This should be your decision. There's a lot of people who'd pay good money for a mutated master plaga, and several of them already know he's here. I can't go back with a useless body full of bullets from my own gun. Do you understand?"

"You brought me here to kill him." His teeth bit into his own tongue, and it took every ounce of self-control not to head back down that ladder, out of the church and put miles between them. Ada crossed her arms, resolute. Reminded him of Claire when she did that.

"That's one option. You could leave him with me, walk away. I can tell you want to. Or," she said, and turned to Buddy, "take him back with you."

"No." The words slipped out too fast. Ada turned back to him, her face impassive. "Dammit, I don't have time to look after a high-maintenance _pet_, Ada!"

"Then you can deal with this. Here and now."

Shit. Shit, shit. Why was everyone always completely determined to constantly fuck him over? If it wasn't his own damn government, then it was his lovers. His ass found a covered, dusty old armchair. His fingers pinched between his eyes. "Fuck. Let me think."

"Take as long as you need. Alex, eat something. I brought you food."

Buddy drifted to the table where a paper bag rested on top of the case of syringes. He withdrew something red wrapped in clear plastic. Raw meat, maybe steak. After a furtive glance at Leon, he ripped into the plastic with his teeth and tore off a strip of meat. Liquid oozed over his fingers. Leon made his gaze focus on Ada instead.

"The DSO can have him. Keep him in the facility, monitor the plaga."

"Test on me like an animal." Buddy ripped another chunk of meat into his mouth. Under his lips, the tips of too-sharp teeth peeked. "I'd rather die."

"Maybe you should. And you _are_ an animal, you're eating raw meat. Any other weird things you like to chow down on? Maybe kittens, or children's tears?"

Buddy stopped chewing for a moment. His eyes pulsed red like a heartbeat. "Blood is quite nice."

"See!" Leon threw a hand at him and turned to Ada. "How the hell can I even consider taking him back? What, am I supposed to turn him loose on the neighbourhood every night? Raid the nearest pet store and bring him rats to eat? I'm not about to go out of my way when this whole thing's his fault in the first place!"

"I wasn't aware that I'm not allowed to die."

"You shouldn't have injected yourself with the fucking thing to start with." He remembered being in the same church, telling himself he wouldn't beg Buddy for the plaga. Perhaps he should have. "You could have stopped it all right there if you'd just listened to me. No one else had to die!"

The red faded from Buddy's eyes. He said something in Russian, and Ada made a small noise in the back of her throat.

"I don't think he meant that, Alex."

"Cut it out!" Leon's voice snapped the air like a whip. He pointed at Buddy. "You, speak English. Not going to have any of that 'talking-behind-Leon's-back' bullshit. And you," he said to Ada, the edge easing off his tone, "more explanations. Tell me about the plaga."

She sighed and perched herself on the arm of the chair. Her hand found his leg. "It's… integrated. The host can cause physical mutations, but I'm not sure to what extent. And there's no BOW around to see if it can control them. When you shot it you must have damaged it. Not enough to kill it entirely, but enough to make it seem like it had died and taken the host's spine with it." She tucked her hair behind one ear and nodded to Buddy. "What we think is that it underwent a metamorphosis, a cocoon stage, and mutated upon the host's death."

"And the stuff in those syringes stops it taking over completely."

"The serum ensures the host stays in control, yes. I can get some any time I like, that's not an issue."

"So you knew he still had the plaga in him and never told me?" What a surprise.

"It wasn't like that." Ada's hair flopped back into place when she straightened. "Just a theory that it might not be completely dead. We kept tabs on him, the serum was developed in case the theory proved true. His death was unexpected and had nothing to do with outside forces."

"And you want me to take him. I bet he chews the furniture." It was supposed to be a joke, but fell flat when he looked across at Buddy. Red eyes stared back. Purple and black circled them like the world's clumsiest makeup. That was a little better. Not human. If he had been slavering and feral then that would have been easier still.

"I'm not a pet," said Buddy. A halo of brown hugged his pupil. "Not _yours_, or _hers._ I can't believe I –" He shook his head. "I was an idiot. Of course we were never friends. How could we be?"

"We parted on talking terms. Good enough for me." The lie clogged his mouth like the many layers of dust in the room. He swallowed away all the times he'd ever wondered how Buddy was doing, how he'd fought to keep from digging into records or using his contacts to see what he'd been up to. Buddy had needed space. A chance to live again.

_And that went so well, didn't it?_

Buddy stepped forward and crouched beside the chair. His face seized with desperation, an echo of when he had grabbed Leon's arm in the hospital.

_Don't go._

"If you're going to shoot me," he said, his words low and urgent, "do it properly this time. Cut off my head. Burn my body. Whatever you need to do." The brown bled out in his irises, covered the red. "I never want to crawl out of a grave again."

What could he say to that? Leon turned his head, focused on the wall opposite. Fingers clenched in his sleeve. He didn't shake them off.

"I saw Irina," said Buddy. "They buried us together. Wasn't that kind of them?"

"Stop." Leon stood up, pulled his arm away. The floor churned under his feet. "I don't want to fucking hear it!"

Buddy watched him, only his eyes visible over the arm of the chair like a little kid peeping over the covers at a monster hiding in his bedroom closet. A pissed-off, manipulated monster. Ada sighed and fiddled with some kind of device in her hands. Probably talking to one of her super-secret bioterrorist contacts.

He paced the floor as Buddy had done. The dust blew around him. "Why am I always the poor sucker who has to make these decisions?"

"Because you usually make the right ones, Leon." Ada's device vanished into one of her pockets. She looked down at Buddy with all the compassion one might show an injured animal. He shied away from her and pressed himself against one of the lumps of furniture. "And you're good at showing mercy, in whatever form it takes."

"Mercy. Right."

Buddy's fingertips made tiny circles on his knees. He didn't look up as Leon approached, or at the whisper of noise of a gun being withdrawn. Why didn't he protest, or try and defend himself? It would have made Leon feel like shit, but at least it would be a reaction he could expect.

His gun shook. Dammit. Ada's neutral expression met his glare. She tilted her head up as though contemplating the cobwebbed chandelier. So even she didn't want to watch, huh? Figured.

He took a deep breath and steadied the gun. How many times would he need to shoot before the plaga died? Once? Several? Would he need to reload, or ask Ada if she had a rocket launcher stashed away somewhere? What if –

Buddy's eyes met his. They had stolen the pink from the sunset three years ago, and now the light turned them a faded tawny. Human. Not human.

"God _damn_ it!" The words choked themselves from Leon's throat. "Damn both of you!"

He snapped his gun back into its holster. There. Decision made, for all the good it would do him. He sat back down on the chair and stared at nothing in front of him. This would all end in tears, wouldn't it?

Ada cleared her throat. "Do you want me to take him back? I've got contacts, so we can travel without too much hassle. I don't think your men would be too happy with a plaga on board. He might raise some interesting questions."

"I think the most interesting question is: what the hell am I doing?" He rubbed his chin with his hands. Fatigue crept up from out of nowhere, stung his eyeballs. Must be going soft in his old age. "If you're ever late bringing me that serum –"

"There'll be enough. He needs it every week."

"And if something happens to you? Are we just delaying the inevitable here?"

Her hand on his shoulder sapped away the anger. He looked up as she bent down and kissed him with rose-petal lips. "Don't worry about me. And you've been in worse situations than this."

"Not many." His palm moved to her hip, and for a moment he forgot where they were. His other hand found the back of her head. His words, quiet and barely there, breathed against her cheek. "Tell me I'm doing the right thing."

"You know you are, my dear." She pulled away from him and smiled. "Now, no sense in waiting, is there? If we start moving we can have this whole thing over by tomorrow afternoon."

"Sounds like you're trying to get rid of me. Try not to misplace him on the ride back, will you?"

"Don't worry. I'll take care of him."

Buddy's arms were wrapped around his knees. He scrutinised them both with that guarded look Leon had seen on him during the civil war. Suspicion wrapped in silence. Leon couldn't quite bring himself to crouch down to his level, so instead he put his hands on his knees and leaned in close. "If we do this, you gotta keep a tight leash on that… thing, okay? I'll help as much as I can, but if you get out of control you know what I have to do."

Buddy nodded. Flecks of rat blood still freckled his chin. Jeez, he was going to be a fun roommate. Ada's device beeped in her hands. She scanned the screen, a frown on her face. Her thumbs danced over buttons as he watched. "What are you telling them?"

She brushed the hair out of her eyes and gave him a small smile. "That some handsome agent swept in and stole my prize. They're not too happy with me."

"Not going to get in any serious trouble, are you?"

"I'll be fine. Come on, Alex," she said, and glided over to the door, "We need to leave now if we want to beat the sun. Ever been in a helicopter before? "

Coaxed off the floor, Buddy followed her, his head down and hands by his sides. "Can -" he began to say, and then stopped, shook his head. Ada frowned, opened the door with a creak.

"Can what?"

"Can we… go past the graveyard?" Head still down, not looking at either of them. Ada blinked and glanced towards Leon. Of course, Irina would be there. Maybe JD, if his body hadn't been tossed in some incinerator. Leon had seen the pointed memorial in the market square, had taken a moment to peruse the names. He didn't know if they'd included the rebels or not.

"I think we can spare a few minutes. Leon, we'll see you later."

She blew him a kiss and stepped through the doorway. Buddy lingered, finally met Leon's eyes. He opened his mouth as though about to speak, then closed it. After one final reluctant glance, he followed Ada with all the enthusiasm of a beaten dog. The door closed behind him.

It would have been childish to kick out at the furniture, so Leon contented himself with a hissed "_fuck"_. How was he supposed to explain this when he got back? Maybe he could stuff Buddy in his closet or attic whenever Claire or Sherry came round. Be a lot less hassle than trying to explain why he had a plaga sleeping on the couch.

Another rat dodged between his feet and ran squealing under the chair. One of the lucky ones. His phone buzzed in his back pocket. Hunnigan. He'd have to tell her the distress call was a dead end, start the first in a long line of lies to people he cared about.

Leon sighed and pressed the answer button.


	2. The Lion and the Wolf

He reached up into one of the cupboards, fingers brushing a tin can, the wheelchair creaking under him. That was all.

Outside, Holigrad cleared the last of the rubble, plastered over most of the bullet holes. The Russians milled for a while, and, with a little American persuasion, gave over government to elected locals. They raised a monument in the market square, and for months no one could decide whether to carve the names of soldiers or independence fighters.

He had no say. He had finished with the war. Went back to teaching. Stayed alone in his apartment, that flask tied to his wheelchair and a charred ring in his pocket.

And then he reached up into one of the cupboards. That was all.

His arms lost their strength. Pressure slammed around his skull. Chin met chest with a click. The can fell from his fingers, but he never heard it hit the floor. A dark hole ripped itself open in front of his eyes. Everything roared, a fathomless ocean inside the confines of a skull.

Muscles locked. He could do nothing but watch the blood drip down from his nose to his legs.

_No_-

A tinny noise. Wind chimes in the ocean.

He slumped forward, and his own blood drowned him inside his head.

* * *

><p>He woke from nothing to nothing.<p>

Blind. No smell, no sight, no touch. A loud bang, then another. Silence for a moment, before his heart settled back into the habit of beating. Something that wasn't quite blood pumped through his veins.

A squeal of air rushed into dead lungs. Dry passages opened, pulled his breath in faster. The pain snuck in like a thief; at first an ache down his spine, then an explosion of sensation that set fire to his skin, his muscle, his bones. He screamed, but all that came out was a helpless, new-born mewl. Cold leaked from his mouth, dripped down under his head.

_Where_-

"You always looked nice in a suit, Sasha."

Shrivelled eyes stung with a sudden flood. One arm came up, hit something solid. With numb fingers, he dragged his hand across the obstruction. Nails scratched. In one weak movement, he struck upwards. One blink, and a milky blur became his world. Beyond that, darkness encased him.

"I'm down here," someone whispered into his ear. Someone familiar. "Come and get me. Please?"

Before a thought could crawl sluggish into his head, his arm went automatic, smashed down through silk and wood and wood and silk. Not much room, but he managed to roll onto one hip and reach down to touch velvet. A desperate hand pulled the hole bigger. The milkiness vanished and left only the black.

His fingers touched cloth and something sharp. Under his palm, Irina sighed. He moved onto his stomach and put his face to the hole.

She stared back without eyes. Skin had tightened to bone on her face and a few strands of hair lay brittle on her shoulder. Teeth bared where lips had withered.

"I've missed you," Irina said, her voice like the dry click of old bones. Her mouth never moved. How could she- How could she be-

He sank down, cheek against the floor of his coffin, eyes on the hole. So dark, how could he have seen her? Confusion shuddered through his body. His thoughts strayed, and time drifted from him, warped into forever.

Tips of bone poked through the hole. Finger bones.

"Sasha."

He tried to scream again. Pressed back as far as he could. The fingers melted, reformed. Terror burned, and the thin thread of sanity snapped.

Up.

Trapped down here forever. No air. Everything pressing around him. His hands tore at the silk and the wood above, then hit something even harder. He smashed his head into the concrete barrier, drove himself upwards. His gasping sobs grew thin. A flash of himself, folding down, dying back in his coffin with her arms around him. Please, not that, anything but that-

The concrete shattered and earth rained down on his face. He spluttered, choked, but tore at the rest of the slab, pushed himself up into the sky of dirt. He tore at it, bit it, frantic to widen the gap, but the earth could only go so far down. It squeezed his shoulders, chest. He was burying himself just as much as he was digging himself out.

Maybe there was no above. Maybe he was a hundred feet deep in the ground, a thousand.

His scream compacted around him. Nowhere for the sound to go. The earth shivered, and tiny particles fell in a miniature landslide. Desperation fuelled his legs (_legs_?) into kicking, pushing.

"Stay with me," Irina's mad whisper floated below him, "don't leave me in the dark again, Sasha!"

Tears streaked the soil on his cheeks to mud. He gasped again, head swimming. Not much air left, had to keep going. Bone peeked through the blood and dirt on his fingers, but he clawed through the pain, clawed up, crying now like a child, but still clawing and -

Cold against the tips of his fingers. He pushed into something new - no, wait, that wasn't right, not something, nothing. Air, outside. The exosphere of his dirt sky. His hands shovelled, furious, every ounce of remaining energy put into tearing away the thin layer that separated him from escape. The falling earth caught in his eyes, his nose and ran down his throat when he opened his mouth to tug in the waning air, but it was worth it, because now he was inches away, centimetres -

He burst up into the cold, and his energy deserted him. When that first breath filled his lungs, his cry was like that of a drowning man who had reached the surface just in time. The pain came back as he slumped over with his head, arms and shoulders peeking from the ground. He yanked in another breath, and his chest was full of lit matches, striking, burning and waning just as quickly. And his legs... the lightning bolts of agony scrunched them, curled them as a dying spider's curled, made him wish they were gone completely, cut off.

Another scream came. This time it whistled out of his throat, no louder than a dry whisper of a dead woman. A voice answered, female, smooth and peppered with a trace of amusement.

"You're late, Mr Kozachenko."

He had no strength left to be afraid. She had somehow clawed her way out ahead of him, those brittle fingers and leathered skin slicing through the earth beside him, and now she would make him pay for leaving her again. Maybe he deserved it. He forced his eyes up despite the scratch of grit and caught a flash of black fur trim. His mouth opened, and through the gush of cold liquid he managed to make a slightly more coherent noise.

"...rina..."

"I can't help you, I'm afraid," Irina said. The fur wavered - a breeze, or was she walking? - and a slip of one leg came into view. How could she be wearing a skirt when he had buried her in a dress? "You have to get out of there on your own. Come on, you can do it. Just a little bit further, you're so close now."

"...can't..." He lay his head down on one arm, the cool earth against his cheek. His breath came harder. The frigid air threatened to dry out his eyes, but blinking only brought more scratches.

"You can. It's nearly dawn, and if someone comes by and sees this..." Irina did something out of his sight that made her coat flap like the wing of a large bird, "we are going to be in some trouble. I really don't want to get chased with torches and pitchforks again."

Her words muddled around his head. He moved one arm, grasped what felt like frosted grass under his hand.

"That's it. Come on, Alex."

No one had called him Alex before. He swayed there a little, head drooped and chin met the dirt. The missile-fast doze of the sleep-deprived dragged his returning senses down. He could sleep, right now, sleep away the ache in his head and chest. Perhaps the world would make a little more sense if he did.

"No, don't go to sleep."

He protested with a childish noise of denial. Let him sleep, let him have all the damn sleep he wanted. But even as he thought this, his other hand reached out, pulled at the frozen ground. The little shards of ice that clung to his fingers did not melt. Irina encouraged him with little words whenever he stopped to pant, and as he heaved himself up, the ground clung as though it didn't want to let him leave. He hadn't done his time. He needed to pay for what he had done... what he... what had he done?

Irina kneeled in front of him. She had cut her hair, her beautiful, long red hair, and dyed it dark. Her face was a different shape. He dragged himself a little more, and now he was half-out, clutching the grass between his fingers and moving his legs as though he was trying to swim. The ground seized around his hips and for a terrifying moment he thought he would fall back in, the earth cascading around him, burying him again.

"I need to see if you're strong enough." Even Irina's eyes had changed from a summer-sky blue to a shrewd grey. "And I-" She raised a hand toward his face, then lowered it with a sigh. "Poor thing. I feel sorry for you either way."

She stood and stepped back as though the hole he had clawed open would engulf them both. His newly-beating heart skipped as she did. Don't leave, he wanted to say, and then, with a little more venom, thought: _HELP me! Why aren't you HELPING ME?_

He heaved himself again, and this time he managed to wrench himself out to the knees, which caught under the edge. A sliver of pain ran behind his kneecaps. Carefully, as though they would both break off, he bent one, then the other, and pulled himself out all the way. A crowd of frost-sharpened flowers turned the ground into jagged points. He let himself collapse on them anyway, curled up, his back to her and his hands clenched against his stomach. It was all he could do.

Memories shuffled like a deck of cards. He had a gun, now he had a syringe, now a monster paced at his side, now he was the monster, she was the monster-

"Good." Irina stepped over him, over the big pile of bare earth, and stood on the other side. She tilted her head down at the hole, and then scraped with one foot, knocked the soil back down. He lay, ear tucked over the petals of some over-scented flower, and watched with half-closed eyes.

The woman wasn't Irina. That first clear thought popped into his head just as his fingers twitched and warmth rushed to the tips. Irina was down there, still staring up into the dark. A hint of moonlight picked out the letters of her name on the headstone - the headstone he had decided on in a rush of grief and tears.

A final stamp with her heel, and the woman sighed. "A little bumpy, but I don't think a break-out is going to be on anyone's mind. How are you doing down there?"

With some miraculous surge of energy he flipped onto his stomach. That cold liquid rushed up his throat, splattered all over the flowers. Even through the shadows he could tell that it was black. Blacker than the night, which was... looking remarkably bright, now that he had blinked most of the dirt from his eyes. The other headstones were grey lumps in a sea of silver grass. A little further over the wall, a scatter of houses, Holigrad's meagre suburbs, pushed against the mountains. Another mile or so out, the city glittered like the centre of a galaxy. Even from here he could see the church spire. Even from here...

The ground faded under him. He went somewhere else for a little while.

_His knee is aching by the time he finally finds the ring hidden in his pocket. Irina's hands go to her cheeks. Her face is blank, no eyes or nose or mouth. How could he keep it in his mind when they left him with no pictures of her?_

_Now she stands with him on the riverbank, and they are watching the small boats cruise up and down. Fish cling to the current, and their scales flash in the sun._

_She turns to him, and this time she has eyes. Red eyes. Oh, love, he says to her, what did you do?_

_I made a monster, she replies, and smiles as though she is showing him a new dress. Do you like it?_

When he came back, he was sitting, and the woman was talking to him.

"- lucky someone paid the pathologist not to cut your skull open. Let's get you up, and then we need to find a place to keep you until... Well. We'll see."

"Take... take the boats." He stood, and then sank back down. "We can watch the fish."

"Maybe another time. Come on, let's go."

She stood, patient, while he gripped her hand and pulled himself off the ground. Under black cotton gloves, her skin burned. He let go, and stared at her for what felt like hours. What was she?

"Alex?" She tugged at his sleeve. "We have to make a start before it gets light."

"Wait. No." He swayed, and staggered away from the grave in case he fell back down. His throat felt as though he had swallowed dust, and he coughed up another glut of the black liquid. At the side of the river, Irina pointed out the fish he had missed. He shook his head. "I don't... know who you are." The words came easier now, stronger. "I'm not going anywhere with you."

A smile curled her lip. For a moment, she looked like a cruel child about to set an ant nest on fire.

"Are we really going to do this? You can't fight me, not right now, but I can't carry you either. Stay here, and in... oh, an hour or so, you'll be dead. Again."

"I... would rather-"

"You don't mean that."

He focused on the flowers at his feet, and tried a step. They crunched under polished black leather. Those were his shoes, weren't they? And the suit pricked a vague memory. He touched his own face. Clean-shaven. Memories slid away, swam from him like a shoal of fish. He turned his hands over, palms facing the sky. What had he done?

When he looked back at her, the woman held something in her hand, something that gleamed almost white. She held it out to him. He took it through surprised reflex, and when he glanced down, someone whispered from some of those flitting memories.

_"We owe it to the people who died alongside us, we have to continue living!"_

He startled. The flask slipped from his hand.

"He gave you this." She bent, picked it up, and pressed it back into his fingers. "Could have taken it back in the hospital, but he let you keep it all the same. And you've been carrying it around ever since." Another smile, but this time secretive. "He must have really made an impact, hm?"

A hospital? He traced the edge of the flask. Yes, he did remember something. The bitter-clean smell of antiseptic. The sting of a needle. And him.

"He sat next to my bed. I think we talked... for a long time." Or maybe time stretched, slowed by whatever painkillers they fed into him. Regardless, even though he couldn't recall the words, the other man had given him some semblance of comfort. He turned the flask over in his hands and made himself look at the woman. "Why would he do that? Why would he stay?"

"I can only guess." She tugged the coat tighter around herself and shivered. Red tipped her nose. "Would you like to ask him yourself?"

His stare found the stars. He slid the flask into his jacket pocket. _Do you like it?_ Irina said again, her eyes flashing as she giggled. Back in his apartment, he slumped over, dripped blood onto his legs. Died alone.

In a spasm, his arm moved up as though warding off some danger. The graveyard came back in a blink. Panic flooded his stomach, then faded. For a moment he had seen the dust clinging to the floorboards, had smelled the hot metal of the stove. Where was he? In the graveyard, or back there?

The woman turned without another word, and her feet crushed the frost when she walked away. The coat floated at her thighs, and those wings billowed, snapped up in the breeze. She did not look back.

Did he really want to be alone again.

Every inch of skin went numb. Pressure pulsed behind his eyes. He tried to pull a breath in. Then another. The air was thick, too thick to suck in. With a faint whine in his ears, he stumbled forward, feet dead weights. She reached the gravel path that wound its way through the graveyard, and he weaved, like a drunk, around headstones to catch up with her.

A few paces away now. He slowed, kept the distance. She continued walking, unafraid, sparing not even a single glance at him. Dangerous.

And what other choice did he have?

Behind them, trapped under a dirt sky, Irina whispered _'Sasha' _one last time.

* * *

><p>"You kept that thing?"<p>

He opened his eyes to Leon standing at the bottom of the basement stairs with a syringe in one hand and a pack of vacuum-sealed meat in the other. Not the most encouraging thing to see so early in the evening, especially not with the few day's worth of stubble on Leon's chin, nor with the lingering trace of alcohol he could smell, or the leather jacket that had been worn too many days in a row. How many drinks had it taken for Leon to open the basement door and come down?

The flask dangled around his wrist. Back when he had left the hospital, he threaded a long piece of thin leather through a hole near the top, and hung it from his wheelchair. A few of his fellow teachers frowned at him for that, but when he explained that it was empty, and that it held some sentimental value, they had left well enough alone. Now as he sat there on an ageing sofa, he had looped the strap over and pulled the flask through so that it wouldn't fall. He gave it a little tug.

"Buddy?"

He heard, rather than saw Leon take a few steps closer. Cautious, like some wary deer edging towards a sleeping wolf. He stroked over the sheen of the flask and rolled the strap between his thumb and forefinger. Leon's eyes followed the movement.

A few seconds ticked by, and he straightened, let the flask drop. "Yes?"

"Okay... Did you know you just zoned out right then?" Leon tossed the meat onto the empty sofa seat next to him. "That better not be plaga related. I'm serious. But my flask-"

"You want it back?" His own words seemed to come from very far away. Zoning? No, it was more like a drifting. Untethered. Terrifying and disconnected all at once.

Leon held up his hands. "Hey, you can have it, I got about three more upstairs. I just didn't think it was the sort of thing you'd lug around after you. I mean, it's only a flask. Not even a great one - I remember the top always catches when you try and screw it back on. So why?"

Was that more of an implication than an actual question? Through the fog of his mind, the meanings strained out of reach, so he clenched the arm of the sofa until the rough fabric under his palm made everything a little less blurred. "All I got from the war was a wheelchair and this. I lost Irina. I lost Ataman, I lost JD." He held up the flask. It bumped against his raised arm. "I didn't even manage to kill Svetlana. Why did I keep it? Maybe I am tired of losing things."

Leon's lips twitched into a frown. "You didn't lose. You're still... here."

"Barely."

"Christ. You know what, fine. Everything is dark and miserable, got it." Leon took another step forward and the frown turned more frustrated. "If you want to wallow down here in your funeral suit, then that's fine with me. But I don't have the time to indulge whatever this is, I..." The frown disappeared, softened by concern. "Hey, your eyes are getting kinda red. Let me-"

Fingers tilted his chin up. The basement light, although dim, stabbed a lance of pain through his eye socket. He winced, shifted in his seat. Those fingers were surprisingly gentle, but unease rose in him like bile, and after a few seconds he pulled away.

The silence stretched between them. This close, the smell of alcohol was even more noticeable. A bitter-clean stink of spirits. Leon regarded him as though standing over his deathbed; solemn and quiet, as though any voice raised above a whisper would send the heart monitor flat-lining. "You haven't been sleeping."

He said nothing. Neither had Leon, by the look of things.

"Is it the couch? You don't have to stay down here, you know. I have a spare room."

Three spare rooms, by the count from outside the house. All aspects of Leon's life were a puzzle. A big house and no family, as though Leon was waiting for them to suddenly appear from thin air. No lodgers or people renting out. Just rooms that had awed him with their open designs. Such a far cry from his apartment back in the Eastern Slav Republic. No peeling wallpaper or pepper-specks of black mould creeping across a corner of the ceiling here. No bullet holes in the plaster.

"I like it down here."

"Liar. It's a total mess, I know, I keep meaning to at least push all those damn boxes into a corner. The bathroom doesn't even have a shower, have you been washing in the sink?"

He shrugged.

"Jesus, Buddy -" Leon moved a little closer. He moved a little back. "Look, just come upstairs, you can grab yourself a shower, and I probably have some clothes that'd fit you - maybe not pants, but a shirt at least. Your... suit is not a great look. And it's pretty dirty. What do you say?"

"So we can have these awkward conversations and avoid each other every day? I'd rather not." In fact, the thought terrified him. The idea behind something so domestic terrified him. "You will never trust me, not like this. And I would... not trust you not to shoot me."

His eyes fled to the flask strap. Leon exhaled, and the pause tightened.

After a few seconds, Leon shifted, and there was the rasp of a palm against stubble. "Well... long as you don't try and gnaw off my arm."

The humour might have been more appreciated by someone else. He picked up the packet of meat as a distraction, and picked at the plastic. When he looked up, Leon's head tilted down at him with an expression close to curiosity. "If you cook that -"

"I get sick." He bit the words out. "The first food she brought me was something cooked. And I spent the whole day vomiting."

"Nice. Thanks for that."

"It made me feel less..." He wanted to say human, but it stuck in his throat like gravedirt. And what did it matter now, anyway? Ever since he slid that needle into his skin he had not been human. Perhaps even before that.

A soft sigh, and Leon sat beside him, enough distance that it should have been comfortable. The syringe danced between long fingers. Leon's gaze was on something in the distance, some long-forgotten memory or daydream. Now who was zoning out?

Against the high, tiny window, snow battered itself into clumps. The war had been at its worse during the winters. So hard to stay warm. A wrench in his chest when he thought about it. It was as though he missed it, but at the same time, the sensation grit his teeth. How could he miss the war, or those beasts he commanded?

He got to his feet, left Leon sitting on the sofa. Paced to the opposite wall and then back again.

Made sure to keep his distance. A tickle in his chest, and he wheezed out a cough. Damn parasite. Frustration coated him like sweat, and he sped up his pacing, this time moving to touch the other wall in a looping figure-of-eight. He had been a teacher and a soldier, and now he was nothing -

A hand on his shoulder. He stopped. Turned.

The distance between them was dangerous. Another feather-touch in his lungs, but his throat froze in paralysis. Leon's eyes searched him. The grip on his shoulder increased.

The plaga purred a thought into his head. A cascade of emotions drowned his senses, nipped his mind like tiny insects, grabbed his stare and directed it towards the warm rush of blood in front of him. He jerked back, away from Leon's hand. No. Never.

The syringe twitched up. Leon didn't blink, but one hand disappeared under that leather jacket. Ready to do whatever was needed.

He'd never felt more like an animal when he backed away, hands up for good measure. The plaga still seethed inside him, but a cold dose of fear had been enough to damper it for a few more minutes.

Leon relaxed by centimetres. "Time's up, I guess."

Time had been up for a while. It was reassuring to know that someone punctual was in charge. He put his hands down by his side and watched as Leon fiddled with the plastic cover on the needle.

"How do we do this with your... medicine?"

That was a nice way of putting it. "Medicine," he said, and glanced down at the syringe. "Give it to me. Then leave." The raise of Leon's eyebrows made him add a 'please' on the end.

"Why? What's going to happen if I don't?"

_Why_. The word irritated more than it should have. All his teacher mentality had died, it seemed. Anger pinched. The plaga curled in his chest and the first few spikes of pain flared. Calm, he needed to be calm. His back teeth clenched together against the hot jabs in his chest, and he fought to keep his voice steady. "I think it would be best if you left."

"I can't help you if I don't know what's going on-"

"I don't need your help!" The word came out strangled; he choked on it. Another curl from the plaga, and he hunched over, lungs spasming in a cough. Agony constricted his ribs. Metal bands wrapped around his torso and squeezed. Another cough hacked out of his throat, and he barely had time to draw breath before another seized his body. Control slipped away. He jerked in animal terror, certain that this time, this time it wouldn't stop until the plaga had what it wanted.

His knees hit the floor, and he was right back there under the earth with only Irina for company, the weight of the earth pressing down. Helpless. The world fuzzed into multicoloured mist. He tried to pull in a breath, but now the coughing took over, tried to drown him inside his own body. The plaga took its chance, and each stab of spine and tiny legs brought an excruciating pain he couldn't even begin to comprehend.

The plaga _reached_ -

_"There you are."_

- and paused.

He trembled. Hands scrabbled against the floor, opened and closed like the beak of a dying bird. Tears stung his eyes, trickled down into his hair. Someone said his name from very far away.

He felt the plaga's confusion. It trilled, then waited, listened for a reply.

_Snow. Metal on a mountainside. The prick of electricity, and hundreds of tiny, silent dreams._

A sting in the side of his neck. Instant and then gone. Snow melted into carpet, metal slid into the walls.

The plaga shuddered, then relaxed. It withdrew, reluctant, from his mind and, with a final spasm, curled itself up. Pain flared, flickered, then vanished entirely. Its absence left him hollow and shivering. Blood coated his tongue.

"Buddy- Jesus Christ-"

He managed to raise his head by inches. Leon's face swam into view, and the expression there was more than a little guilty. Moving was a battle of stiff limbs and the clench of his stomach in anticipation of more pain. Safe for another week, but that thought didn't comfort him. That snow he- the plaga had seen, the mountains with metal in them. He knew, with the certainty of someone in a dream, that the place was somewhere far away. And that voice...

"Hey, come on, up you get-"

He didn't have the strength to push Leon away. An arm under his, and he was pulled to his feet, head lolling to the side.

_There you are._

The shaking wouldn't stop. His fingers curled against leather. Leon took him one step forward, and something clinked against his foot. The syringe. Leon dragged him back to the sofa, set him down a little more gently than he would have expected. Eyes stung. The tears dried to salt on his cheeks. He wiped them away with the back of his hand.

"Look at me, Buddy. Gotta see your eyes." No fingers under his chin this time. A few seconds passed, and Leon nodded. "Back to normal. That was... close, huh? You feeling okay?"

If 'okay' meant 'felt as though all his limbs were about to fall off'. But he bit his tongue and nodded. Leon gave him an encouraging smile, rested one hand on the arm of the sofa. "Great. You know... I meant what I said. Come upstairs. I think it'd be better for you."

"Do you trust me?"

"On some things. It's not like you'd just up and leave, right?"

He shook his head. It wasn't as though he had access to his medicine anyway. Doubt still ate away at him, so he cast his eyes somewhere safe, to Leon's shoulder, and tried to seem at least a little demure. "I do not want to leave. You... would really want me up there?"

"Sure. We'd have to go over a few things first. But I gotta say, I'm sorry for keeping you down here so long." Leon's fingers picked at the threads of the sofa. "I guess I was just pissed off. At her, and at you. Not your fault though, was it? I mean, screwing yourself over with the plaga was, but... What you said before, about waking up in a grave? Were you serious?"

He flinched. Inquisitive bastard.

"I guess you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I just thought... hell, Buddy, I don't know. Come upstairs with me. I want you around if we're going to figure all this out."

He sighed, rubbed a hand against the side of his face. It would be nice to feel more human. And a change of clothes would be more than welcome. When he looked Leon in the eye and nodded, a twitch of a smile replied. Genuine this time, not bred from guilt.

He moved to stand, but Leon's hand on the flask stopped him, a gentle grip that tugged on his wrist.

"Promise me you won't try and leave."

"I already -"

"I know, just... just humour me."

His hands clenched the sofa. "I promise. I promise I won't leave, I won't try and _escape_."

The pressure on his wrist eased. He heaved himself up, and Leon stepped back. The smile vanished. "All right. Grab your food and let's go."

Now his own guilt rose, wiped any lingering frustration. If he avoided looking at Leon, then he wouldn't have to face those eyes. If he stared at something else, he could tie any stray emotions down, keep himself as blank as a statue. Emotions meant vulnerability, the war taught him that. He still saw Svetlana's sneer when he hammered on that glass, felt the fury blaze and spike. She had seen how much he hurt. And that smile as she disappeared behind a metal door told him that she knew she had won.

At the bottom of the stairs, his feet turned to lead. The door at the top loomed. His skin froze. The back of his neck prickled. On the middle step, Leon turned, moved his hand in a _this way_ gesture.

Sasha took a deep breath, grabbed the banister, and began to climb the stairs towards Leon.


	3. Heretic

Leon had been awake for an hour when the alarm went off with its nagging _reep reep reep._

One good whack on the top button shut that up. He groaned, stretched up as sweat cooled on his arms and stomach. What he wouldn't give for another few minutes in bed, another hour or so to crawl out of this sleepy-satisfaction and turn the little gears in his head that put him in work mode.

A trace of roses lingered on the pillow next to his head. The sheets still held patches of foreign warmth.

"You sleep too lightly."

Ada leaned against the doorway of the bathroom. Pale skin contrasted nicely with the thin black panties and silky scarf she wrapped around her hand, broken only by the red love-bite on her neck. Had he done that? Probably. Some of the details of last night escaped in a haze of vodka shots and her fingers, her mouth.

He sat up, kicked the sheets down to the end of the bed. "Only recently." A shrug of his shoulder was enough to set Ada's lips dipping at the corners. "It's fine, nothing to worry about."

"Well, if you're sure." She bent down, then straightened with her bra dangling from her fingertips. Another little sigh left her, and a bite of annoyance nearly had his attitude running his mouth. _What? _he wanted to say. _You saw the same shit as me – what are you so pissed about? _But instead he clenched his jaw, stared at the alarm clock. Let her have that passive-aggressive bullshit if she wanted. Time and patience for that sort of thing weren't his style.

The elephant in the room reared its head and swung heavy tusks around when Ada considered him with those dark eyes and said: "So how is our brooding plaga?"

_And it comes back to this._

He shrugged. "Yours more than mine."

"Do you think so?" With a deft twist of her arms, Ada reached behind her back to hook her bra into place. Had he undone it last night, or had she? "Maybe I should take him with me on my missions – he can meet all the lovely people who'd kill me to get their hands on him."

"He's not that great for a plaga. I don't know why anyone would want him." An uncomfortable tingle itched at his spine. After a few moments of staring at his fingers, he stood, naked, and began to gather his clothes into a semi-neat pile. "He's quiet," he said to one of his socks. "I don't usually see him, even though it's dark when I go to work. I... gave him the room at the end of the hall. And some clothes. They don't fit, though." The sock hit the pile as a ball. "It hurts him, doesn't it?"

Ada slipped her shirt over her head. Her eyes stayed on the jumbled mess of clothes. She said nothing, as though the words had washed over her, but they knew each other better than that.

A creased shirt poked out from under the bed. He pulled it out, made some attempt to fold it. "That's three times now I've injected him with that stuff. He just... tenses up. Doesn't seem so bad as that first time, but..."

The second time, he'd avoided Buddy's gaze as Ada avoided his now, even though the room had been almost too dim to see his eyes. With Buddy perched on the bed, he'd used a hand, a thumb to chose the place to slide the needle in. The silence between them hung, awkward. Words of comfort wanted to come ease the tension (as well as some joke about feeling small pricks,) but they dried in his throat. Perhaps that was for the best.

The third time... Jesus, was he drunk? He'd tried to inject a vein on the inside of Buddy's arm, but things had drifted, and instead of stopping inside, the needle went too far, scratched through to the other side.

And he'd left Buddy there on the bed to deal with whatever monsters battled behind red eyes.

"He doesn't say anything to me. How can I help him if he doesn't _say _anything to me?"

"Maybe he's scared of you."

He blinked. No coherent words formed in his brain. A swish of red, and Ada floated over to him, a slight smile curving her lips. "That's..." he managed after a moment, "no, come on. Scared of _me? _He's the one with an evil parasite inside his chest. If anyone's scared, I think I get that grand honour."

Lips pressed to his cheek. The scent of roses swathed through the air. Dimmed arousal flickered, and he turned his head, caught her mouth with his own. A hand crept to the back of her head. Before he could take it further, however, or persuade her to rewind the past few minutes and take her clothes off again, Ada drew away. "Do you think he was scared when you left him in the hospital?"

He stiffened. "He's a grown man."

"A lonely one, with a dead fiancée and dead friends."

"You _like_ him." His disgust came out bitter with the stink of jealousy. The arousal snuffed out completely, and under his hands, the bedsheets twisted.

"We had a chance to talk a lot in that church before you showed up, yes." If she saw the abuse he heaped on the sheets she gave it no acknowledgement. "It's a strange thing, trying to coax information from a dead man. I didn't give him much back, not even my name – and don't look at me like that, I know what you're thinking."

_Did you kiss him? _Maybe he should have said it aloud, but instead he snorted, brushed the rest of his clothes into the pile. She could have called him a hypocrite, and she'd be right. After China, his bed saw four new people – those were the ones he remembered, anyway. The last one had been a bartender at one of his usual haunts: mid-twenties, maybe, (a little younger than he liked, but not a deal-breaker by any means) with dark curly hair and big blue eyes. Too pretty to be behind a bar, he'd joked, already half-drunk, and Blue Eyes (Jasper? Casper?) gave a shy smile and took the unspoken invitation.

"I _think_ I need some coffee." The first few threads of pain ran from forehead to under his eye, and the back of his throat stung. "Shower too." He pinched the top of his nose, rubbed the weariness from his eyes with thumb and forefinger. "Work's gonna be hell today."

"More escorting the President around like a lost child? Or is he finally brave enough to go a day without you?"

"Lay off him, it's not like the past few presidents have had a great track record." If he let his mind wander far enough at night, he still saw Adam staggering towards him, face slack and eyes dead. Further back, Graham's grief when the Los Illuminados kidnapped Ashley had torn something inside him, and his vow to return her drove him through the village and castle. "And it's training. There's a meeting soon to decide on sanctions against countries –"

"- Who still approve the use of B.O.W. Yes, I know."

"Of course you do." He meant to get up, to cross the room to the bathroom, but gravity held him tight where he was. His hands knitted together, fingers rubbing fingers just to keep him in the _here_ and the _now_. A brief flash, and he saw his flask in Buddy's hands, Buddy's own fingers moving constantly over the strap. Now he understood.

Ada's hand squeezed his shoulder. "Leon."

"He wants me there. He wants me to get up and remind them all how stupid using B.O.W is... or maybe he just wants my face there for them." Who better to advocate against B.O.W's than someone who had seen what they were capable of? And who wanted to be there less than he did? "I don't know if I can talk to any of them. The second that someone disagrees..." He looked her straight in the eye. "I don't know what I'd do."

"Smile. Smile, show that pretty face to the cameras, and tell them why they're wrong."

"And if they don't listen?"

Her fingertips trailed down the side of his face. "Well, that's why they send you out on those missions, isn't it?"

That wasn't the most comforting of answers. He pulled his fingers away from each other. Outside, the sky bled from black to indigo. Buddy would be heading to bed now, if not already there. Little plagas needed their sleep.

He kissed Ada's fingertips, but memories snagged on themselves. He had suffered his own plaga for a couple of days,and the creeping sensation of his own body being slowly taken over still haunted him. Buddy's would remain squatting in its chest cavity nest like a malignant tumour until someone invented something that could zap a full-grown plaga out, or the host died.

_Serves him right, _said a mean little voice in the back of his head that wasn't as big or as loud as he thought it might be. _He's not a bad man _was a little more insistent.

How was he supposed to balance out the morals of a purely grey situation?

A swirl of red coat, and Ada gave him that small half-smile he had come to know well. "I'll see you around, Leon."

"Wait-" he stood and managed to smack the side of his hand against the table. That'd leave a nice bruise. Ada raised her eyebrows while he tried to pretend that pain wasn't throbbing through two of his fingers, and folded her arms. "I... uh..."

"Leon, I can't stay."

"Why not?" The words came out a little too sharp. Had to reign that attitude in before it got the better of him. "You never stay. Come on, Ada. Just this once." _And help me with him, _he wanted to add, _don't make me do this alone._

But she raised her chin, and despite the fact that she was shorter, it felt too much as though she looked down at him. "You're a grown man."

Well, so much for that. He set his jaw, rose, and pushed past her to the bathroom. By the time he was done with splashing water on his face and taking a piss, she'd vanished as she'd arrived – no ceremony, and only the scent of her as his torment. Christ, it was like loving a ghost sometimes.

Tucked away on the chair under his desk, the metal case gleamed. He clicked the latch up. Inside each syringe the liquid roiled, and the purple glint reminded him of tense muscles under his hands, the constant tremble of his own fingers. A stockpile of Buddy-medicine. Or poison, depending on how he looked at it.

The sky shifted gently into a cloudy blue. Light enough outside now to see the shrinking patches of snow in the darkness and the early mill of suburban rousing. A few brave joggers and dog walkers navigated the icy sidewalk with an inspiring determination, highlighted every so often by the headlights of crawling cars. A collection of faint orange glowing of cigarettes burned across the road.

He stretched his arms over his head, winced at the pop and click of bones, and shook whatever remained of tiredness out of his limbs. The steady throb of headache wrapped even further around his skull. Dammit, hadn't he said no more drinking on work nights?

One hand on the bathroom door. Yeah, a shower sounded real good right now –

_Vrrrrrr. _

His phone. For a blissful second, he hoped that someone had just pressed the wrong button by mistake.

_Vrrrrrr-_

"God damn, _shit- _"

He grabbed his phone off the bedside table. The picture that came up nearly had him slumping back into bed and pulling the sheets over his head like a child. Half an hour- couldn't the guy give him half an hour to get out of bed and shower before calling him up to whine?

He rubbed his face, tried to keep his voice at least slightly pleasant while the headache surged down his eye socket. "Mr President?"

* * *

><p>After the guy he'd bummed a smoke off disappeared to whatever shithole he'd come from, Lorne took one last drag and crushed the butt under his boot. How long had it been since he'd had a fucking cigarette? Too damn long – if Her Royal Highness let him, he would've smoked the Little Shit in his chest into a coma.<p>

He breathed out, long and hard, and the squirm under his ribs prickled. His fist came up, and even under the wool of his gloves and thickness of his coat he managed to give his chest a hard whack. "Enough outta you."

It settled (always did when he hit himself hard enough, the bitchy little coward) and fell quiet.

Cop-Guy'd gone away from the window, doing whatever the fuck it was cops did before work. It didn't matter – he wasn't there for some government bitch – but punching himself was probably a mistake out in public. If Cop-Guy (Kennedy, she said his name was) had seen it, it would've set his senses tingling. Not his fault – this covert bullshit was just that: bull_shit_. He didn't do this sneaky tiptoeing stuff. If it was up to him, he'd have kicked the door in in the early hours, grabbed the target, then when Kennedy came down to investigate the noise: _pow, _one right in the guy's forehead, another in the chick he'd been screwing. Then out.

Fucking easy.

But _no_, he got to be stuck playing spy games. Sure, exciting enough when he'd hidden from that chick when she'd crossed the road towards him – he'd melted back into one of the fancy hedges that all the rich bastards around the neighbourhood seemed to have – but until then, it had just been watching a whole load of nothing. Not even the Russian had appeared, but he damn well knew that guy was in there. The closer he got to the house, the more Little Shit kicked up a fuss, twitching and squeaking and having the fucking _nerve _to tell him to go and find the new plaga.

Oh yeah, definitely in there.

The door opened, kicked him out of his own head. Kennedy blew a stream of white air out his nose like a pissed-off bull, locked the door, muttered under his breath, and turned to teeter down the steps and onto the sidewalk. Poor princess looked like he'd had a rough night – probably why the car was out of the picture. When Kennedy turned his way, Lorne looked down at his phone and thumbed the screen like he couldn't give a shit. Just a guy waiting for a ride to work. Kennedy probably couldn't even see him in this light, but hell, he needed his phone out anyway.

A pause, shake of his arms against the cold air, and Kennedy headed left. Subway direction.

A swipe, tap, and her number blinked on the phone screen. What time was it there, stupid-o'clock at night? Oh, he hoped so.

She took her sweet damn time picking up. Always did. _"Yes?"_

"Wow, flew halfway around the world and I don't even get a 'hi'? That's cold. How are the girls, they missing me?"

"_You better have a good reason for calling me at this time." _Damn, if he tried hard enough, he could hear her forehead getting even more wrinkles. _"Did you see him?"_

He kicked a pile of snow with his boot. "No, but-"

"_I made this very clear, did I not? Why would you call me if you haven't seen him? Do you enjoy wasting my time?"_

"I _love_ 'vasting your time'." He was halfway around the world, what the hell was she going to do to him from her creepy ice fortress? "I know he's in there. Little Shit's going nuts whenever I get near the place. Been here all fuckin' night waiting, the sun's about to come up, but no sign of your boyfriend."

Her breath down the phone came in a long, loud inhale. Probably counting down from ten. _"You didn't SEE him."_

Damn, she wasn't letting it go. "So what? Who else is it gonna be?" His skin itched, stung with the rising sun. Everything in his body was trying to drag him to the nearest safe spot, the same brain juice that told humans to run from tigers.

"_Kennedy knows plaga. He could have anything in there, not just Kozachenko."_

"A whole damn worm daycare." He took the phone away from his ear, looked down as if he could see through his chest. "Like the sound of that?"

"_Go back tomorrow night," _she said. Sounded like she was doing some serious thinking over there. _"I want you to see him – properly, not just a glimpse. Look at him. Then tell me he's there. Break in if you have to, just find him."_

"Sure thing, I'll take a good long look."

"_Call me when you're done. Not before. I won't tolerate more incompetence from you." _

Woah, when she did unspoken threats, she really did unspoken threats. He opened his mouth to say 'no shit,' but the click and buzz of a dropped call stopped him. Under his ribs, Little Shit twisted, carefully this time, to remind him about the sun. "Yeah, yeah, I got it. Damn, I don't think mom loves us anymore. Maybe I should've done a bit of ass-kissing, huh?" Little Shit wriggled around some, then settled itself back down. He snorted. "Well, what the fuck do you know?"

The clouds started going a grey-orange colour, so he turned, wrapped the shabby scarf he'd found in a garbage can around the lower half of his face, and shoved his hands in his pockets. Snobby modern neighbourhoods weren't great places to hide from daylight, but something usually turned up – an unlocked garden shed, or tucked-away storm drain.

And hell, there were always sewers.

* * *

><p>The headache pounded away until about noon, chased away with some aspirin and plenty of water. The shivering and nausea took a little longer to shake, but Leon liked to think he dutifully held his nerve while Keselman fidgeted over and over with the papers on his desk. 'Training' had been drastically re-routed to 'sit and go over proceedings for the B.O.W meeting while the President uses you as his personal monster manual.'<p>

For someone who had won the political race based on promises of B.O.W eradication, Keselman sure hadn't done much background reading. Ganado and zombies were apparently interchangeable, and Wesker had unearthed the plaga in Spain, not Saddler.

He tried to manage these mistakes with polite coughs and humble corrections, but there were so many that after a while he simply let his mind wander, let Keselman go on thinking that Sherry was a codename for the G-virus.

He finally collapsed back through his front door an hour or so earlier than usual (despite feeling like he'd pulled several in overtime,) toting a bagful of groceries that went straight on the dinner table in the kitchen. _Everything_ went straight on the dinner table – keys, phone, the two letters (probably bills) that he'd grabbed from the mailbox. An empty bottle of vodka rolled away when he tried to tug more mail out from under it, and a stack of papers from work threatened to topple and spill over the side. The bottle went in the trash, and he was tempted to sling the papers the same way. Instead, he pushed them into neater piles, set them at right angles to each other in an effort to make it look like an actual adult lived in the house.

Crumbs speckled the counter like a galaxy of distant stars, relics from the fast slice of dry toast he had made that morning. They went the same way as the bottle, and the kitchen finally looked a little more habitable. Buddy never left any signs that they actually lived in the same house, and he couldn't decide if that was a blessing or a curse.

The last of the sun faded to the west. He stood, hands flat on the counter, staring out of the window. Would he ever get used to measuring time by the hours until dawn or dusk?

Two pork chops went under the grill and, after a brief hesitation, he took his peace offering from the bag, lay it on its own plate.

The clock on the wall ticked down the seconds and minutes. He sat at the table, cooked chops in front of him, and took a bite while he waited to see if his unconventional lodger would turn up for dinner, or wait until the coast was clear. Either suited.

Ten minutes passed, and he'd nearly finished the pork chops. He had just pushed the last bites around his plate when that _tick _at the back of his skull (what Mueller called 'the spidey-sense') tilted his head up.

Buddy met his gaze and froze.

They considered each other for a few seconds, long enough for him to take in the way his shirt exposed a clear inch of Buddy's wrists, and how the fabric strained at the shoulders. His flask gave the too-short sweatpants a lopsided bulge at the pocket. Thank God the funeral suit vanished, that had just been fucking morbid.

He cleared his throat, a loud and unnecessary noise. "I... didn't know when you were coming down. If I were you, nothing would stop me from having along lie-in -"

"There's-" Buddy paused, his eyes down at the table set for two, eyebrows drawn together in a frown. A step closer towards the place laid out."I don't... is this for me?"

The last bite of pork chop, and he shrugged as though the steak had suddenly popped into existence without his knowledge. "I didn't put it there for the resident poltergeist. Just saw it when I was buying groceries and thought you might be getting bored with that cheap diced stuff. C'mon, sit down and eat."

Buddy sat, although the frown remained. Not an upset frown, one of those puzzled ones, like a confused puppy trying to work out a command. "Was this expensive?"

"Does it matter?"

"I suppose not." Buddy fiddled with the knife and fork as though reminding himself of how to use them, and kept his head down when he said, "Thank you. For... for this. But there was something I wanted to say."

"Oh yeah?" The pork chops might all be gone, but he stayed seated, elbows on the table and fingers linked under his chin.

"I think there's something outside."

"You're going to have to be a bit more specific. There's a lot of things out there; my car, mailbox – think I saw a raccoon the other day as well. Oh God, you didn't get into a turf war with a raccoon, did you? They can be vicious bastards."

Buddy's brow did the creasing thing again, but this time the twitch at the corners of his mouth deepened into something that could pass as a smile. Nice to see. "It was more like when we were home. I mean, in the Slav Republic."

Buddy cut the steak into neat slivers, but fork chased them around plate. The next words took him a few moments to spit out. "I walked through them to get back to the church. They looked so... _dead_, didn't they? I watched them from the window with JD... they moved like zombies. But they were more alive than they had been before."

A prickle on the back of his neck. Hairs rose on his arms.

"One tried to talk to me – a woman. She had on one of those bright yellow puffy jackets, you know?" This time Buddy did smile, and held a hand against his upper arm to indicate the rough measure of puffiness he meant. "And a tiny skirt, considering the weather." The smile dropped with the hand. "She said- she said 'find more family.' I didn't understand, but then that _voice -_"

Buddy's eyes fell to the steak, and a hand went down to the flask. Fingertips caressed the top that peeked just above the table. Probably didn't even realise he was doing it.

He cleared his throat, leaned forward over his empty plate. "Do you mean her plaga spoke to you?"

"Yes... no." A forkful of meat finally ventured to Buddy's mouth. That had to be the least-enthusiastic way he'd ever seen anyone eat a thirty-dollar steak. "It was more like it sent me the feeling of being with family. Comfortable, happy. And then it showed me more infected hosts, and that felt even better."

"Wait, it sent you pictures?" The nasty memory of lying on a dirty wooden floor came back, and with it, that jolt of terror when black veins unfurled across his arms and face. Just a hallucination, or a dream, he'd thought at the time, but what if all those ganado had been sending him creepy subliminal messages while he was curled up on the floor and whimpering with pain? "Like... movies?"

Buddy shrugged with one shoulder and bit into another piece of steak. Weirdly delicate for a guy who'd been ripping open rats a month ago. "Maybe. It sounded like her, the thing outside. Asking for family."

"When?"

"Last night. The feeling kept fading in and out. Like... like waves." Buddy's mouth tightened into a line. Eyes darted to the side and stayed there.

The silence sat the same as between him and Ada. He clattered the plate against the table as he picked it up, purely to try and relieve that tension. A drop of grease ran onto his hand when he walked to the dishwasher.

Full dark now, and as he nestled the plate between two prongs the image kept coming back – the one that dragged itself up like a ghoul on sleepless nights. JD at his side, the two of them looking for a clear route to the church. Plaga drifting through the streets, hunting, thoughtless, no matter what Buddy said, almost like being back in Raccoon city. At least plaga didn't have to bite to reproduce, but the way that soldier _screamed_, and the silence afterwards –

Never again. Not in his damn town.

Yet he heard no wail of sirens, no people screaming, no neighbours hammering on his door with bloody fists and tears of horror. Under the street light opposite his house, a lady jogged along the sidewalk despite the patches of packed snow, some kind of small dog happily pottering at her heels.

Normal. No dead bodies strewn around like broken dolls, no horror lurking around every corner.

The gun at his hip comforted with its weight. "I don't see anything out there. Maybe your plaga's going haywire. They do that sometimes –" He caught himself, shut his mouth. Buddy didn't need to hear it, and he didn't need to remind himself of the sick nausea of having an overgrown spider parasite wriggling around inside his chest.

Buddy's fork poked at the steak, tapped at the edge of the china. Guy still wouldn't meet his eyes.

He sighed. "If anything happens, we'll be ready. I have a hotline to the BSAA, military – and hey, it's not like I'm a civilian. Got a safe in my bedroom, gun cabinet in the study. We both know how to use guns – well, one of us does. The other one likes to fire from the hip like he's seen one too many movies."

"Don't blame me, I had no training but JD's insistence that we watch _Predator_." Buddy gave him that funny little half-smile again, and he felt his own lips pull up in response.

"So every time you shot at me, you were picturing me as some kind of invisible alien? No wonder you always missed. We need to get you to a range, fast, then you can learn to shoot at Americans properly."

Going for a little moonlit session at the outdoor shooting range could be a fun bonding activity. Buddy would get through on his word, no problems there, and if they turned up at the right time, they'd have the place mostly to themselves. He'd be able to knock Buddy into some sort of semi-respectable stance – start off slow with a handgun, work up to the AKs over time. Maybe Buddy would even turn out to be a halfway decent marksman. Hell, with the plaga, perception probably went through the roof. Needed to work on that aim – he could tug Buddy's arms into the right position, stand over his shoulder to make sure the grip was okay. Too tall, though, he'd have to stretch up on tiptoes, cheek to cheek.

"Duncan always liked that," he said without thinking. Buddy glanced up from the plate, the ghost of a smile still on his lips.

"Who liked what?"

"No one – I mean, just some guy I used to take to the range." Duncan, with the buzzcut and the muscles and the too-easy laugh. They'd brush against each other deliberately – accidental or careless to anyone watching – see who threw in the towel first. It was a game that only ended between the sheets. "Weird place for a date, yeah, but at least we didn't have a bill to split."

"I don't... are you being serious?" That smile vanished, and the all-encompassing frown returned with vengeance.

Shit. He'd forgotten that Buddy might not exactly be on-board with things like that.

He folded his arms, leaned back in the chair. "Yeah, I am. He was a sweet guy. But sometimes things just fall apart."

"I don't understand." Now Buddy decided to meet his gaze. "Ada-?"

"Not to sound cliché, but it's complicated. And I don't really want to talk about her right now. Or," he said when Buddy opened his mouth again, "my preferences. Let's just drop this, okay?"

Buddy directed the confused-puppy expression to the steak instead, but nodded all the same. "Didn't she want to see me this morning?"

"No, I think she was too busy doing her sneaky-spy stuff to pay much of a social call." Even if they had been rolling around on the bed – him still drunk from the night before, her guiding him with legs around his waist and nails in his back – he wasn't going to count an hour. "She asked after you, though. She's sweet like that."

"She..." Buddy paused, considering,"was kind, in the church. Vague, but kind."Another mauling of a piece of steak. He had to strain to hear Buddy's next words. "She reminded me of you."

"Ah, come on. I don't look nearly as good in a dress."

"I have no trouble believing that."

"Ouch. Cruel."

A grin in response – no more shy polite smile, a real toothy display – and Buddy's chest hitched in unmistakable suppressed laughter. He grinned back, relaxed into the chair with the first warm symptoms of infectious laughing.

The pound of the door jerked his body upwards, like he'd been caught doing something less innocent than sharing a laugh. It was the kind of frantic thump that made him think of SWAT teams and battering rams. Buddy dropped his fork, eyes wide and mouth open, but he stood and held out his palm. "Wait there."

"Leon -"

Halfway down the hall, he slung over his shoulder: "Probably just a wrong address – don't worry. Yeah, yeah," he said to the hammer of the door, "hang on!"

Wrong address or not, one hand automatically went to his gun.

He opened the door, and in spilled a man with wild hair and even wilder eyes. A gash yawned from hairline to eyebrow, soaked half the too-pale face in blood, muddied a faded orange scarf brown. Even with all his training, experience, the sight of the wound froze him for a couple of seconds.

"Oh, Jesus Christ," the man babbled at him, grey coat flapping in excitement, and held a hand over the gash, "Jesus Christ, thank you -"

"What the hell happened to you?" He took a breath in through his nose. A mistake. The guy smelled like a sewer.

"Fucking... that park across the street – someone robbed me!" A drunken tilt, and the man lurched into the wall. A small hoop of earring glinted under the hall light. "Had a knife, cut me up. Is it bad?"

"Not that bad." The lie came automatically. Head wounds were notorious bleeders, but under the hall light a wedge of white peeked through the red. From the angle of the parted skin, it looked as though the knife had ripped down. Weird way to attack someone, but he'd seen a lot of weirder shit. "Come on," he said, and propped the man up as best as he could, "let's get you into the kitchen. You can sit down, and I'll patch you up, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," the man pressed a hand back to the wound. "Jesus. Thanks, man."

"No problem." He shut the door, and put a hand on the man's shoulder, steered him gently up the hall. They passed the threshold of the kitchen, and muscles went stiff next to his body. Christ, please don't let him be passing out already. "Buddy, under the sink. First aid kit."

For maybe three seconds, no movement or sound.

Buddy stood behind the chair, shoulders hunched and hands curled into claws. Lips peeled back from teeth in a snarl, and the skin around red eyes bled into bruises. "Get away from him."

The animal part of him went cold with fear. In the human part, something yanked at his throat, his chest. Had the sight of blood triggered the plaga? "Buddy..."

The gun at his hip. Could he do it?

But Buddy's eyes went to the man beside him, the man who had taken the hand off his head and who now wore a smile.

No thinking or considering. He pushed away, went for the gun –

Grabbed nothing but the holster.

The man smiled, twirled the gun in his hand. "Had you going for a second there, didn't I?"

Shit, what else could he defend with? Chairs. Knives in the drawer. Even the plates could provide some distraction. Buddy edged around the table, towards him, but the man clicked his tongue so fast that it sounded more like a rattlesnake's warning than a cluck of disapproval.

"No-no-no, you stay where you are. I know you want to come over here and give me a big ol' hug, but hang on a second..."

"I'm not afraid of you."

"No?" The gun came up, aimed at him. Safety clicked off. He didn't flinch. "How 'bout now? Are you afraid of me now?"

Buddy took one step back, eyes narrowed but mouth shut.

The sight of this asshole waving his gun around was almost too much to bear. If he caught the guy off guard, distracted him somehow, he could barrel forwards, grab the gun, or at least make a diversion so Buddy could help. He raised his hands in the 'don't shoot' position. "What do you want?"

"Me? Jesus, okay... Well, a shower would be nice, for one. Uh, some decent food. Hey – is that steak?" The man swept his gaze back and forth between them. It landed on Buddy. "You get _steak? _Aren't we a pampered little Ruski?"

Buddy's growl hit inhuman levels, but the man only laughed. So different to Buddy's laugh – no warmth in this one, and it sounded a little too mad for his liking.

He put his arm out to the side as though that could calm Buddy down. "Look, you're down on your luck, something like that? I know a place you can get a bed for the night. They'll feed you too. You don't have to do this. You seem like a reasonable guy." Another lie, and the man wouldn't be anywhere near crazy enough to believe he really though that, but it was worth a shot.

"He's not." Buddy's voice trembled, fury and confusion under the words. "He's a plaga."

Shit. Should've been faster with the fucking gun.

"Oh- oh, now you've gone and spoiled the surprise. You're fun..."

"Why are you here?" Buddy swayed, side-to-side, a snake about to strike.

"What, this isn't the shelter for abandoned plaga? Damn." A smile. The gun spun around and around. "I just felt you crawling around in here by yourself and assumed you were lost."

"Lost?"

"Please." The man snorted. Flakes of dry blood peeled and flitted to the floor. "Don't try and bullshit me. Don't tell me you _prefer _being alone. It doesn't work that way."

Where there was one, there would be more. That much was true at least. Back in the Eastern Slav Republic, in Svetlana's little den of horrors, the plaga slept in their glass hive, waited for a host. Destroyed by the BSAA cleanup crew after their bee-keeper had fled – but had she managed to take some with her? "Hey," he said, and tried to keep the edge of impatience out of his voice, "you still haven't told us what you want."

"I just wanted to come see you guys." A brief nod at Buddy. "Especially you, _Alexander_."

"Do you two know each other?" Had to keep Mr Big Mouth talking a little bit longer – the guy hadn't even noticed he'd taken a small step forward.

To his great offence, his question was ignored.

"Did he call you 'Buddy' to make you a bit friendlier? Or does he just want a dog really, really bad?"

"Get out."

"Are you kidding? Do you know how far I came to see you?"

"I don't care." Buddy bristled, all red eyes and bared teeth. Angry, but the kind born from fear. "You will leave."

A laugh. This guy really liked laughing. "Please. You probably haven't even figured out any of your magic tricks yet, and I really hate beating up the newbies. And your little cop-friend here doesn't look like much. "

He said nothing, and shifted his weight to one side. It should look like he thought about backing down. Once the man's eyes flicked back to Buddy, he darted forward. One hand went for the gun, grabbed the wrist and forced it up even as he cracked their foreheads together.

The man reeled back. A hand against his on the wrist. Buddy beside him, warm and furious and afraid.

A couple of fingers squeezed, and the gun was his again. Muzzle under chin, but the man weaved away before he could pull the trigger.

Under their palms, needles burst through the cuff of coat, stabbed into skin. He yelped, pulled away. Buddy mirrored him. Dots of blood welled over his hand, and shit, he hoped nothing nasty lurked on the end of whatever the fuck that was.

Spines poked through the coat, as thick as his finger, from collar to cuffs down to hip. They spread up to the man's throat, bounced and flexed with every movement.

"Thanks, assholes, I really liked this coat." Red eyes flicked to Buddy. "Man, Little Shit here thinks you're a bad boy. I don't blame it - you're hardly worth the fucking effort, are you?" A swipe of hand against mouth, and the man sneered. "I've had some shit family reunions before, but wow. Don't worry, I'm going, I'm going. Wouldn't spend another minute in here if you paid me." In the time it took to blink, a snap of coat, and thrum of footsteps, and the man wasn't in the kitchen with them any longer. The door slammed open with a sound that jolted him back to himself.

"Wait!"

Why he yelled that he'd never know. Taking orders looked like the last thing this guy did.

He followed, gun up and heart throbbing in his throat, but the open door led to nothing but the street. No crazy plaga guy in sight.

"Is he gone?" Buddy hovered at his shoulder, eyes bleeding back to their usual colour. Anxiety pinched lips, turned eyebrows down.

"Yeah." The gun felt okay - nothing broken or out of place. "Stay here."

"Leon -"

"I have to go and find him." He bit down on whatever Buddy wanted to say. "This is my town, and it's my fault he's here. If he hurts anyone... tries to cause another outbreak..."

"It's not -"

"He isn't like you, is he?" He tried to talk fast. Every second they stood there was one more the guy had to get away. "He is, but he isn't. You saw him - he had no problem pointing a gun at me. I need to track him down, maybe call in the BSAA." That was one big bitch he wanted to avoid if he could help it. If they found out he'd been keeping a plaga in his house...

If they found out he'd been keeping _Buddy_-

"Let me go after him instead."

It would be impolite to laugh, so he screwed his mouth up. "So instead of one plaga running around town, there'd be two? Hell no."

Anger chased the anxiety away, but human anger, not ragey-parasite-monster-anger. "You don't trust me? Even now?"

"Didn't say that."

"I would find him faster than you. And I would come back here. There's still half a steak on the table waiting for me after all." Buddy stood up straight, shoulders square. A soldier aching for a mission.

He needed to find the other plaga. But - one flaw with that master plan - he wouldn't know where to look. Hell, he didn't even know which direction the guy had gone. Buddy could probably sniff the other plaga out, run it down faster than him.

And if Buddy failed, got killed by that crazy bastard?

He flipped the gun over. Held it out. "All right, Buddy-Boy, you're officially a police plaga now. Just... whatever you do, stay away from civilians."

"Thank you." Buddy holstered the gun in the waistband of the too-short pants. Man, he should have bought some more clothes. The neighbours would have a fit if they happened to catch a glimpse of a guy running down the street barefoot and with just-short-enough-to-be-noticable pants and shirt on. And a strange, lopsided bulge of flask in one pocket.

Buddy stepped out, and a faint breeze caught strands of short hair, pulled them around haphazardly. A deep inhale, and he could swear he caught the beginnings of a smile on Buddy's face. No need to get panicked (or so he hoped) - if he hadn't been outside for a while he'd probably be wearing a grin too.

Another step. In his chest, guilt kicked at his heart with metal-tipped boots. "Hey, Buddy..."

Buddy turned. The street light caught half a face, cast the other half into shadow.

Words failed him for a moment. He stumbled over what he wanted to convey in his head. After a few seconds of stalling-for-time utterances, he swallowed, set his jaw, and made sure to meet Buddy's eyes. The hell with it. "Come back home, okay?"

"I promise." And then Buddy's voice dipped, stroked down into something that sent a jolt through his stomach. _"Leon."_

He opened his mouth - in a question or just surprise, he didn't know - but Buddy melted into the dark at the side of the street.

For a few minutes he stood there, the cold sliding past him into the house (into the _empty_ house now,) and hoped that he hadn't just sent a good man to his death.

_A good man, yes, not a good plaga, a good MAN-_

God dammit.

He closed the door, took the stairs two at a time. Headed for his gun safe.


End file.
